


Don't Hurt The Gingerbread Man

by HumanJukebox



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Baking on a cold december day, Christmas, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Moses is a little bit of a smartass, festive fluff, johnny is precious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21835219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HumanJukebox/pseuds/HumanJukebox
Summary: Vanessa has a great idea to keep the boys busy indoors during a cold spell. Flour, fun and fluff ensues.
Relationships: Charity Dingle/Vanessa Woodfield
Comments: 11
Kudos: 94





	Don't Hurt The Gingerbread Man

**Author's Note:**

> The second Christmas-themed one-shot
> 
> Grateful for my betas 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this one :)

**Don’t Hurt The Gingerbread Man**

Charity was sure that if she had to tell Johnny one more time to stop jumping off the couch or tell Moses to stop climbing on the counter, she was going to lose her mind.

It had been a long,  _ long  _ morning in Jacob’s Fold. The December weather was in full swing. It was cold and dreary, the skies were a grey-ish colour, and Charity was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be long until the streets would be sprinkled with a good layer of snow. 

The ice-cold wind that felt like a literal slap in the face meant that the kids didn’t want to go outside for long. The boys had lasted about ten minutes on the playground yesterday before a very red-cheeked Johnny had asked if they could  _ ‘please go inside’ _ as his teeth clattered from the cold. 

The skies had looked a little friendlier then, but today… Charity didn’t even want to  _ think  _ about stepping foot outside. However, this meant that she and Vanessa━who had popped out to go to David’s shop for a moment, for which Charity had called her ridiculous because who would go out in this cold━were stuck inside with two very energetic and easily bored four-year olds. 

“Moses! For God's sake!” Charity calls out as she rushes towards their dining table. Moses has managed to climb his way on top of it and is proudly standing on it, arms raised in the air like he’s the flamin’ king of the world. 

She quickly picks him up and puts him on the floor. “What have I told you? Shoes on the floor.”

Moses simply looks up at her and points next to the couch. “Shoes are there. On the floor.”

He even has the audacity to give her a cheeky grin. Charity narrows her eyes at him. “I don’t like how smart you’re becoming. New rule. Feet, sock-clad an’ all, stay on the floor. Or your bottom stays on a chair or couch. No more climbing.”

She turns to look at Johnny who is climbing his way over the back of the couch. “Oi! Mr. Woodfield, that goes for you too.”

Johnny’s eyes widen before he quickly drops onto the couch, his body bouncing a few times from the momento as he sits up perfectly straight. He looks up at Charity with an angelic smile, pretending he hadn’t just been climbing like a monkey.

Charity shakes her head and lets out a relieved breath when the front door opens and a red-cheeked Vanessa walks into the house. She’s holding two bags in her hands that she quickly drops onto the table.

Rubbing her gloved-clad hands together and blowing some air in them, Vanessa looks up to Charity. “It’s i-ice c-c-cold out.”

“I could’ve told you that.” Charity tilts her head. “Actually, I  _ did _ tell you.”

Vanessa simply rolls her eyes as she keeps rubbing her hands. “W-whatever. As soon as I g-get some feeling b-back in my h-h-hands, I can ex-explain my i-idea.”

Charity walks over towards Vanessa and raises an eyebrow up at her. “Want some feeling back in your hands? I have a  _ great _ trick for that.”

Vanessa shakes her head. “You tr-truly live in the g-gutter.”

“Oi! I resent that. I actually  _ did  _ live there once.”

“Physically y-yes, but mentally you’ve never str-strayed from the dirty━”

Charity takes a step closer, stepping right into Vanessa’s personal space. “Are you sure you want to finish that sentence?”

The two stare at each other for a tense moment before they both crack a smile. Charity takes hold of Vanessa’s hands and takes the gloves off.

“Hey! They were keeping me warm,” she protests, but Charity simply rolls her eyes and starts rubbing her hands with her own. 

“What’s the use in warming your hands in gloves when you’ll have to take them off anyways? I mean, considering that you seem to have bought some stuff for…” Charity leans over to look into the bag on the table while keeping hold of Vanessa’s slowly warming hands, “...baking?”

Charity quickly lets go and starts perusing the bag, leaving Vanessa to frown at the loss of warmth against her hands. She takes a step closer to Charity and slides them underneath the back of her sweater, pressing her cold hands against Charity’s skin, who jumps a little at the sudden cold with a hiss but doesn’t move away. 

“Cookie cutters, cinnamon, flour, sugar. Frosting tubes, sprinkles.” Charity straightens up and turns her head a little so she can look at Vanessa. “You’re not, we’re not… Are we? Because that’s a bad idea waiting to happen.”

Vanessa frowns at her for a moment before narrowing her eyes. “Have you got a better idea of what we can do today? No. Besides, baking cookies and decorating them is fun. It’ll keep the boys busy for a few hours,  _ and  _ most importantly, we get something delicious out of it.”

“Fine. But I preserve the right to tell you ‘I told you so’ when the inevitable bomb of flour goes off and covers our kitchen  _ and  _ living room,” Charity says and Vanessa simply shrugs. She’s expecting nothing less from the kids━ _ and  _ Charity, the biggest kid of all. Besides, where’s the fun in not making a mess?

“I mean━” Charity tilts her head yet again before turning fully around to face Vanessa and narrowing her eyes. “Moses. Bottom on the couch, not on the coffee table.” 

“But mummy, my feet touch the floor,” Moses replies, a look of complete innocence on his face. 

Charity lets her head fall back. “Oh for the love of…”

Vanessa simply chuckles at her as she wraps Charity in a hug. “Too much like his mummy.”

Charity snaps her head back to look down at Vanessa. “How?”

“Always finding a way to get around the rules without breaking them. Well, at first, because you━”

“Again. Are you sure you want to finish your sentence?” Charity says with narrowed eyes while Vanessa simply chuckles and leans up to quickly kiss her on the lips.

She breaks their hug and winks at Charity, before turning towards the boys━finally taking off her coat━and asking with a cheery voice, “What d’you say boys? Want to bake some cookies?”

Excited cheers immediately fill the living room and Charity takes a deep breath while Vanessa hangs up her coat and walks back to the boys who are jumping up and down in front of the couch. 

She hopes Vanessa’s plan doesn’t go too horribly wrong. Charity remembers a time when she tried to bake with a six-year-old Noah. The kitchen, as well as Charity and Noah, had been covered in flour and messed-up batches of dough. The one batch that did come out okay had gone in the oven too long. 

It was not a success at all. Or well, maybe it had been. Because she hadn’t seen Noah smile and laugh like that before.  _ She _ hadn’t laughed like that before either. So maybe, it hadn’t been so bad.

Looking over at the smiles on Moses and Johnny’s faces as they help Vanessa wipe the table and pull the items out of the bags, she realizes that it might turn out to be the perfect activity to do with the boys today. 

Shaking her head a little, Charity makes her way over to Johnny and helps him choose the cutters he wants to use as Vanessa starts on the dough, letting Moses help put the ingredients in it.

XOX

There hadn’t been much of a mess, at least not as big as Charity had expected it to be. Johnny, the quiet little thing, had been very careful with spreading the flour out on the table so Charity could roll the dough out for him. 

Moses however was more the type to throw the flour up in the air and watch it land on the table while yelling out,  _ “Look! A flour cloud!” _

And of course Charity herself couldn’t pass up the opportunity to wipe a little flour on Vanessa’s cheek and on Johnny’s nose. She’d broken out in a cackle when she was met by the exact same shocked expression on both their faces. 

Once she’d calmed herself down, she had placed the first tray with cookies in the oven━on Vanessa’s orders. They are now cooling down on top of the counter while the gingerbread men cookies were baking in the oven. 

The boys and Charity are still snacking on some left-over dough, while Vanessa checks if the cookies were cool enough for decorating. She carefully touches them and decides that indeed, they are. She then picks the tray up and places it onto the table. 

They’d already grabbed two placemats and laid them in front of the boys so when they’d start decorating the cookies, the icing and other sugary decorations wouldn’t get stuck to the table. 

“What do you wanna do first, Johnnybobs?” Charity asks as she sits down on the chair next to Johnny. 

He doesn’t react and quietly crawls into her lap instead, before pointing towards a star-shaped cookie. “We do the star?”

“We absolutely can,” Charity says with a smile while reaching out for said star-shaped cookie. She then asks which colours and decorations he wants, and while he names them, she reaches out to get it for him. 

She looks up when she hears Moses let out a giggle and smiles when she notices that Vanessa and her son are sitting in a similar position to them. Moses wiggles on top of Vanessa’s lap, reaching for a different tube of icing as they both decorate their own cookies. 

Charity watches as Johnny carefully starts to decorate his cookie. Seeing the smiles and pure concentration on their faces━including Vanessa’s━she has to admit that this has been a lot of fun and that Vanessa had been irritatingly right again; baking cookies had been a great idea.

XOX

After finishing the decorations, it’s finally time for some, as Charity had put it, taste-testing. They put the cookies in two big tins, one of them in the cupboard above the sink and the other on the table. 

Moses is patiently waiting for his mummy or Vanessa to tell him he can grab a cookie, and when they finally do, he immediately reaches for a gingerbread man. But before he can even try and take a bite out of it, it gets snatched out of his hands by Johnny who lets out a panicked and loud  _ “No!” _

Both Charity’s and Vanessa’s eyes widen in shock at the sudden outburst. 

“You can’t eat him!” Johnny exclaims with wide panicked eyes as he hugs the gingerbread man to his chest, taking care to not break him in the process. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Johnnybobs. Where’s this come from?” Charity asks and exchanges a worried and confused look with Vanessa. 

Moses stares at Johnny for a moment before shrugging his little shoulders and reaching for a different cookie instead. He takes a bite of it before walking over towards the couch and crawling up on it, not caring at all that Johnny had taken his cookie away. And definitely not caring about the conversation taking place behind him at the table.

“Johnny, you can’t just take Moz’s cookie like that,” Vanessa softly scolds and watches as Johnny slowly nods his head. 

“But he can’t eat him,” Johnny repeats and looks at the tin before whispering, “ _ Them. _ ”

Charity looks from the cookie in his hand to the three other gingerbread men still in the tin. She then looks back at Johnny. “And why’s that?”

“Cos they my friends,” he innocently states and both Vanessa and Charity realise what’s going on. 

Charity can’t help but let out a chuckle. Of course. Of course little, sweet, sensitive Johnny would think that cookies with faces would be friends. It’s the same with his stuffed animals and other things that have eyes and a mouth, so why not cookies too.

“Oh, Johnny,” Charity breathes out, a small smile on her face. “How I love you.” 

Vanessa simply stares at Charity. She’s at a complete loss for words. Apparently they’re now going to have to find a way to explain to her son that cookies sometimes have faces on them and that you  _ can _ eat them without it hurting them. 

XOX

After trying to explain to Johnny that there’s no harm in eating a gingerbread man cookie, they figured out why Johnny had thought that in the first place. It wasn’t all because anything with a face was a friend, no, this time was because of that damn Shrek movie.

Apparently they’d watched it with Noah, and Johnny had seen how Gingy━the gingerbread man cookie in the movie━had both his legs cut off. Johnny hadn’t liked it at all and subsequently didn’t want any more gingerbread men to get hurt. 

They really needed to have a word with Noah about which films were appropriate for four-year-olds, especially one as sensitive as Johnny.

But luckily, they managed to calm Johnny down again. They did however put all the gingerbread men cookies in a different tin in the cupboard. After some hugs with his favourite person━Charity━and some persuading, he chose a different cookie and made his way over to the couch. 

Who would’ve thought that the hardest part of baking and decorating cookies would be explaining that it’s okay to eat them? Vanessa and Charity certainly hadn’t. 

Despite that unexpected hiccup, they’d had a great afternoon. They’d all spent it together, having a lot of fun and laughing loudly. All in all, it was a pretty good day. 


End file.
